MonikaC
Well-Known Member
For the 2nd night. of high geomagnetic storm, I had enough notice that I could drive 3 1/2 hours north to Wyoming's Snowy Range. The lights weren't as strong as the previous night, but the drama at the overlook certainly was high. I had just pulled in & was setting up when I heard all this yelling behind me, "You hit me, you crazy bitch!" "No, I didn't. You hit me!" and so on. I thought it was a domestic quarrel. Then this woman comes running towards me. "Are you OK?" I ask. "No! I came up here to see the Northern Lights and this guy hit me with his car and blamed it on on me! I don't know if my car is damaged. I'm calling the police!" She turned around and ran back to her car before I could ask if she had some kind of protection and give her one of my bear spray canisters if she didn't have anything. I think she was hoping that I was a man with a gun or something. She jumps in her car and takes off, followed by the guy in his big truck. There wasn't anything anyone could do then, so I kept setting up and, as one vehicle had its headlights on, I walked over to ask if they coud turn them off. They apologized, saying they were caught up in the drama, backed up the woman's story & turned their headlights off.
Back to the Northern Lights: I ended up across the road so I didn't get any of the road signs in the frame and the lights were east of the Snowy Range, so I ended up doing verticals to stack into a pano. As an incidental, the Milky Way was in my far left frame. Had I not been rattled by the opening drama, I may have had the presence of mind to tilt my camera up more & get the entire arc of the Milky Way. But I was thinking aurora and that the vertical portion of the Milky Way was a bonus as it was. I did look up & thought that the Milky Way faded out of view, but looking at the frames on my computer, I think I was wrong. Oh, well. Because the overlook is at the high point between 2 curves, I often had to make 4 or 5 exposures of the same frame due to oncoming cars' headlight or those of people leaving the overlook which was directly behind me and since I was doing 25 second exposures, I couldn't tell that a car was coming in that time.
The lights were best in the first hour I was there & spiked again @2am, but by then, the clouds had moved in, so I got to snooze. Heading down in the morning, I hoped I wouldn't see signs of a car crash on the switchbacks from the woman fleeing and it appeared that she had gotten away without something like that happening.
Back to the Northern Lights: I ended up across the road so I didn't get any of the road signs in the frame and the lights were east of the Snowy Range, so I ended up doing verticals to stack into a pano. As an incidental, the Milky Way was in my far left frame. Had I not been rattled by the opening drama, I may have had the presence of mind to tilt my camera up more & get the entire arc of the Milky Way. But I was thinking aurora and that the vertical portion of the Milky Way was a bonus as it was. I did look up & thought that the Milky Way faded out of view, but looking at the frames on my computer, I think I was wrong. Oh, well. Because the overlook is at the high point between 2 curves, I often had to make 4 or 5 exposures of the same frame due to oncoming cars' headlight or those of people leaving the overlook which was directly behind me and since I was doing 25 second exposures, I couldn't tell that a car was coming in that time.
The lights were best in the first hour I was there & spiked again @2am, but by then, the clouds had moved in, so I got to snooze. Heading down in the morning, I hoped I wouldn't see signs of a car crash on the switchbacks from the woman fleeing and it appeared that she had gotten away without something like that happening.
